DYNASTIES crumble. All good things must end. The bigger they are the harder they fall. Nothing lasts forever.

Pick whichever cliché you think fits best and run with it. You might also choose “winners are grinners” because NSW is that, and Queensland no longer rules State of Origin, Australia’s toughest and most passionate two-pronged sporting contest.

There are all sorts of reasons why Queensland’s eight-year streak is over and the maroon flag will not be seen on the Sydney Harbour Bridge today. Bad luck on Queensland’s part is one of those reasons. There’s no doubt it suffered from injuries to key players before and during the game. And the ball almost certainly touched Aaron Woods’ jumper at the kick-off after the NSW try. It should have been a Queensland ball instead of a NSW penalty in last night’s series deciding 6-4 win.

But this stuff evens out. NSW has had more than its share of bad luck over the past eight years too, most famously in Greg Inglis’s knock-on try that knocked them out of the 2012 series, then again in game one this year, when several bewildering refereeing decisions gifted Queensland the ball in the final stages.

Queensland’s Greg Inglis makes a break through the NSW defence during game two of State of Origin at ANZ Stadium.Source:News Corp Australia

Somehow, miraculously, impossibly, NSW kept the best Queensland backline in history at bay in those tense final minutes, and that’s where this series was won.

Sporting history is written by the team that’s good enough to overcome bad luck. No one remembers unlucky losers.

Let’s be honest. NSW wasn’t great last night. The Blues turned over so much ball it was like they were giving away free footies at a fan day. Nothing really clicked in the backline. Jarryd Hayne was a shadow of his game one self in attack. But defence won this match. When that happens, it’s generally a sign of a team that knows each other, that trusts each other, that believes in each other.

They’re an interesting outfit, this NSW mob. Skipper Paul Gallen is a dinged-up old warrior who seems to get picked in a different spot each year. Their best player, Jarryd Hayne, has only been picked in his best position of fullback for a handful of his 18 Origins. Hooker Robbie Farah makes more than 50 tackles a game, yet is still the team’s most creative playmaker. The halves are a solid club combo who no one will ever speak of in tones reserved for the likes of Fittler, Johns, Sterling or Daley. No disrespect to Trent Hodkinson, who scored the series-sealing show-and-go try, but that’s how it is.

Robbie Farah of the Blues celebrates with Aaron Woods after winning the State of Origin series.Source:Getty Images

Champions or not, together these players epitomise what NSW has lacked for so long. They do the job, wherever and whenever asked. At last this team has a spine. Mitchell Pearce was not the answer. It only took six years for selectors to work out what every fan could see for themselves.

There is muscle supporting that spine at last, too. The two young front rowers, Aaron Woods and James Tamou, are tall, imposing metre eaters. There are blokes like Bird and Watmough you wouldn’t argue with on a football field or anywhere else, and there’s the unsung Ryan Hoffman with his Bellamy work ethic. There are the Origin-ready replacements for the absent Morrises, and there is, in Michael Jennings, the sort of strike weapon who NSW selectors used to dispense with after one cold game. But not anymore. A good thing, too. His try-saver last night turned out to be a match-saver.

So here you have a team with grunt, niggle. Brilliance and X-factor. Did it really take eight years to put all this together? It did.

Michael Jennings is one of the NSW players Laurie Daley has stuck by and it paid off.Source:News Corp Australia

But of course, none of it would have been possible without coach Laurie Daley, who was easily among the finest four or five players NSW ever put on a field. Daley, like his Qld counterpart and former Raiders clubmate Mal Meninga, may not be a coaching genius. But the man is a figure players rally around. Daley is not divisive like Ricky Stuart, the man of whom it was famously written “first you want to kill for him, then you just want to kill him”. At Origin level, players seem to need a mentor rather than a tough boss. Laurie Daley is that.

Daley was known for his speed and vision in his playing days, but he also had the best pair of hands you’ve ever seen. He could have caught a bar of soap in a shower of oil. But the greatest sleight-of-hand trick he ever pulled off was stealing a trophy the Maroons thought would be theirs for years to come.

NSW Blues coach Laurie Daley celebrates with Will Hopoate after his side sealed the State of Origin series.Source:Getty Images

Credit to Queensland. Their eight-year Origin reign is one of the great Australian sporting records. You sense they were chasing the fabulous 11-year NSWRL premiership streak of the St George Dragons in the 1950s and ‘60s, and they sure came close.

This Queensland team will go down as one of the greatest teams in sport. Inglis, Cronk, Thurston, Thaiday, Smith, Slater, Hodges, Tate… the list of champions goes on. You almost forget that names like Civoniceva and Price and the great Darren Lockyer and even code-hopper Israel Folau were there in the early years. This dynasty boasted more big names than the Oscars.

Yet NSW has beaten them. They won ugly, but they won. Maybe Queensland was a bit arrogant this year, a bit uncharacteristically showy in their antics at the Origin series launch. Or maybe NSW just wanted it more. If you’re looking for one more sports cliché to end on, you could do worse than that one.

Last night, we NSW fans celebrated. And this morning, I tell my rugby league mad seven-and-a-half-year-old son some good news I’ve never, ever been able to tell him before.

News.com.au's Privacy Policy includes important information about our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information (including to provide you with targeted content and advertising based on your online activities). It explains that if you do not provide us with information we have requested from you, we may not be able to provide you with the goods and services you require. It also explains how you can access or seek correction of your personal information, how you can complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with a complaint of that nature.